Sounds like HDs are finally on the way out. I can't think of anything they can do to compete.

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 19, 2015, 14:13:

gravity wrote on Jun 19, 2015, 12:51:

jacobvandy wrote on Jun 19, 2015, 10:28:
Apparently there's an existing controversy in the news about Apartheid flags replacing Confederate ones as a symbol of prejudice and discrimination in the more backward parts of America, brought to light by an association with the suspect in the supposedly racially-motivated shooting in Charleston a couple days ago. So it seems a fair bit of bad timing for Squeenix and the reveal of this game using that phrase as a slugline.

Not to be a "correction-jerk," but it's not 'supposedly racially motivated.' Matter-of fact, that's exactly what it was (admitted to it, and was hoping to incite a "civil war"), and it also is quite a thing here in the southern states to invoke apartheid of Zimbabwe/South Africa.

All said, I agree with the labeling of DX. It's exactly that, and I look forward to exploring the storyline.

I tend to use words like 'apparently' and 'supposedly' and 'allegedly' when referring to ANYTHING in the mainstream media. It's unwise to take everything you see there as plain fact, especially when you're dealing with sensationalist reporting of intangible things like motive and intentions.

Yeah... I think anytime you walk into a black church and kill black people and you are a known racist it is a good chance that your killing wasn't just "supposedly" racially motivated. I mean, if the news channel you are watching is trying to spin that you need to get off that news channel and watch something else.

Good to know about the zero fan mode thing. I may look at that. Right now I have a case fan that is pretty noisy and I'm thinking about replacing it when I replace my video card. The PC should be pretty quiet after that.

It sounds like the 970 memory thing is not that big of a deal.

I imagine most people will have cards with 1 or 2 gigs onboard for the near future.

That is what I kind of hate about most review sites - they make all the reviews at 4k resolution with some beast machine but what I want to know is what I can expect at 1080p with an older i7.

When I look at the Steam Hardware Survey my specs are still above average for most gamers so I don't know why hardware sites have to push the $999 video card when everyone is really spending less than $200.

The light-up doorknob is kind of cool since it draws power from the door being opened and closed. I think they could sell it just because it lights up and not even worry about killing germs.

AMD's new architecture is interesting I guess but what I really want to see is real-world benchmarks from 3rd party reviewers. I assume those will come out on day 1 of product release.

Currently I'm looking at 980s but I'm going to wait until winter to buy anything. By then there will be price drops and maybe Christmas bargains.

The 970 is closer to what I really wanted to pay but apparently there is some issue with it effectively having 3.5GB of video RAM instead of the advertised 4GB and fans are so mad I can't tell if it matters or not. Maybe the Fury Nano is what I will want. Nobody knows because all we have at the moment is a bunch of charts and speculation and no product on the shelves.

I will probably still be playing at 1080p for the next 2 years or so. I am just not that excited for 4k.

I liked New Vegas (I beat it multiple times) but it was lacking in exploration. The main map routed you on a specific path (which I hate) and a lot of the buildings couldn't even be entered. It had a much better story than Fallout 3 though.

Fallout 3's map made me feel more immersed in the wasteland and I felt like I was constantly finding new areas and new skeletal vignettes. The story was mostly okay if I recall, but not as good as NV. The only reason I kept replaying NV was because the engine had enough improvements to make me like it more overall. I very much enjoyed hard-core mode, for instance.

I haven't found any of the villains of any of the games as compelling as The Master from FO1. That could be nostalgia though. That's the big thing with Fallout. Everyone has a favorite and everyone is nostalgic for some specific game.

I REALLY enjoy that FO4 is not afraid to use color. I think it better underscores the loss than brown / green. You can see nature trying to come back - but humans are absent and everything man built is destroyed. I like that contrast.

Edit: The skeletons in their automated environment suits from the OWB DLC were a really creepy concept and one of the best new monsters I thought came out of any DLC. As far as DLC goes, OWB is the best I've ever played.

This comment was edited on Jun 18, 2015, 11:37.

Drayth wrote on Jun 16, 2015, 23:53:

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 16, 2015, 20:45:
Those cards with 8GB on board - I wonder if they would help Skyrim cope with using a lot of texture mods at normal playable resolutions (not 4k).

Unfortunately Skyrim has a 4gig software limit. The game just doesn't make use of anything above that limit no matter what your card has.

Oh. I thought one of the patches undid that.

So... Playstation's reaction to BC is "Well, they went their way and we went ours. They have a feature we don't and that lets consumers choose."

Uh..

Not the best spin, dude.

Those cards with 8GB on board - I wonder if they would help Skyrim cope with using a lot of texture mods at normal playable resolutions (not 4k).

R9 Nano sounds interesting.

I'm still running a 6950 or something like that. I think they rebranded it wit a new name a year or so after I bought it. It still actually runs everything I play okay - that's why I never upgraded.

I'm kind of interested in upgrading by fall or winter though.

Maybe I should just build a new one entirely. Everything else is sort of old now too I guess.

>>> Asus is making a 27" IPS, 1440p Gsync.

That sounds interesting too.

I have 2 characters up to "beat" the main story line in the next week or so. I have 2 more that will "beat" it in about a month. They'll all be V1 or V2, which is good enough for me.

I'm not sure I'll keep subbing after that. I will use my points to buy something, call it good, and save the sub. money to put on FO4 in Nov.

It's a fun game and I got my $$ out of it but I'm probably about ready to move on and just play it casually for free. Nothing in this video really changed my mind about that.

Because after a few years ago it all started to look about the same to me.

Anyway, nerds are arguing about graphics so it's time to exit. Not wasting time on it.

What's embarrassing about it if I just don't care?

The things I do care about - those things were fulfilled. The trivial graphics stuff? Whatever. I am just not going to notice it. My days of caring about graphics ended when I got my first prescription lenses.

Different priorities, man. Different priorities.

Slick wrote on Jun 15, 2015, 00:14:
jesus, it's so embarrassing how people can get so excited for some things, and completely gloss over the abhorrent garbage.

watch THIS from the gameplay trailer

If i told you that this game came out in 2006, and not 2016, would you correct me?

The facial animations, low poly count, and low-rez textures are all LAST-GEN. they're reusing the same engine but "upgraded" with "volumetric light" and "physical based shaders".

notice how they didn't mention things like tesselation, SSAO (look at the baby in the crib), parralax occlusion mapping, particles, etc etc etc? cause these nifty inventions of the last 10 years aren't good enough for FO4 in 2016.

it's a 10 year old engine. you can keep putting a new coat of paint over an old and busted house, but this does not a new house make. 2 new features to an old and busted engine is a slap in the face to their fans. this looks like an xbox360 launch title.

meanwhile, the crafting, items, and building all looks VERY cool. but i just can't sit by while fanbois in a reality-distortion bubble say that THIS is a 2016 game.

give me a fucking break.

I liked everything I saw.

I was not expecting the house building function OR the layered / customizable armor and gun system. I was not expecting a jetpack or being able to get in a Vertibird either.

Did he say anything about mods? I missed the first few minutes. I sort of assumed they were in since it's an upgraded Creation engine.

It looks like pretty much everything I wanted and more so Collectible Pipboy edition right here day 1.

People let themselves be treated poorly because they want to work in the game industry. For every person that quits 3 other people want in so quitting does nothing.

What they need to do is show how crappy it can be to work for certain companies and then everyone will know to avoid them in the first place. People want to work in the game industry but they don't want to work in sweat shops where they know they're going to get fired in 6 months anyway.

Even EA started working on their image after they got rated as "worst company to work for" a couple years in a row. Who knows if that translated into better conditions but it did at least demonstrate that EA feels fear when people attack their image as an employer.

IMO that is how pros should hit them. Big companies don't like to be called out like that.

The easy fix is letting companies set whether they want to allow refunds or not and then displaying that decision prominently to consumers when they go to buy.

I like all the colors.

Rumor has the release date set in Nov of this year.

Vall Forran wrote on Jun 4, 2015, 18:02:

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 4, 2015, 17:03:
Didn't some mod add ambient occlusion for Skyrim? I remember trying and then turning it off because it slowed things down enough to be annoying. My video card is kind of old though.

What I want out of Fallout 4 is:

Stuttering fix
64bit exe that can use maximum RAM available
Mod support, of course
FO:NV style "hard core" option

That about covers it. If there are a lot of graphic options I can't turn on or if my card just isn't good enough anymore I will totally upgrade it for Fallout 4. I'm going to wait and see how performance is first though.

I'm sorry, but ambient occlusion is fucking expensive. What you *perceive* as AO, is actually just baked into the textures. AO is pretty much the last thing you do with a finished environment, so (pre-alpha) fuck off with that noise.

Not only did you not read my post properly (I wasn't the one complaining about graphics) but you don't know what you're talking about either.

You did amuse me, so points for that. The fuck off finish was weak though. Try harder.

Didn't some mod add ambient occlusion for Skyrim? I remember trying and then turning it off because it slowed things down enough to be annoying. My video card is kind of old though.

What I want out of Fallout 4 is:

Stuttering fix
64bit exe that can use maximum RAM available
Mod support, of course
FO:NV style "hard core" option

That about covers it. If there are a lot of graphic options I can't turn on or if my card just isn't good enough anymore I will totally upgrade it for Fallout 4. I'm going to wait and see how performance is first though.

shihonage wrote on Jun 4, 2015, 02:42:

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 4, 2015, 01:34:
You have a lot of passion. I'll give you that.

Fallout 2 had quest flags that lead to predefined sub-endings. You are still funneled into an ending. You can't buy a boat and float away to a new world, you can't be king of Bartertown. You can't even change the economy or pick most items up. Minecraft has more going on than that.

Fallout 2 is still a good game, but it's not an open one. The world only reacts to you in ways the programmers predicted.

You want *emergent behavior* and there is little to none in Fallout 2. There is little to none of that in most games because it's hard to do and results can be unpredictable enough that the game goes from being fun to not being fun in a hurry.

You're not entirely right, which makes a HUGE practical difference in this case.

What I am talking about is not _absolute freedom_, which is impossible, but having significantly more freedom than Bioware and Bethesda games allow.

Walls made not out of brick, but out of elastic resin. This means, although the amount of "game endings" is predetermined, the individual player experience is never quite the same. It is also a VERY different feeling, between running into brick and into resin.

Both games in Fallout series accomplished this through rich world reactivity on macro- and micro-levels, as well as "soft area passability control".

It's not just WHAT happens, it's HOW it happens. Multiple quest solutions, design that has no unkillable NPCs or hard-blocked story hubs (i.e. anti-Bioware), passing by a corridor when your PER dings you that there's a stimpak in a nearby locker...

As I said, look into that Fallout guide. It's hard to comprehensively describe otherwise, but it ends up being a rich experience which dithers into something that feels organic and creates more freedom in your day-to-day actions than most games do.

You're not limited to LARPing and choosing which trash can to loot next. The game rewards you for being clever where it actually matters - its WORLD (and I see that term differently than just terrain with critters on it, mind you).

When I talk about this with most people, they immediately fall into this dichotomy - either it's a "an impossible AI that writes a story on the fly", or it's "Dwarf Fortress".

I believe in something else, based on research, not just vague dreams. We can have a game which provides a very convincing illusion of a story that is shaped by YOU.

Oh, there will be limitations as to how far it can be stretched, because we don't HAVE an AI. However we don't need an AI, just some old algorithms from 1960s, and writing+world that are structured to maximize their benefits while hiding their drawbacks.

If you want things to be shaken up you should expect to contribute yourself. There are two engines out there right now you could be using for free - Unity and Unreal - to make prototypes.

Be shiny and we will witness it.

The project exists. You'll witness it on Steam when it moves into functional gameplay.

Now if someone gave me a cure for chronic dry eye, things would move a lot faster.

Fallout used branched story paths that closed and opened new branches as you went - just like Wasteland 2. Some variations were introduced with skill checks that relied on percentages instead of hard locks. Some variations were introduced with light simulation elements (explosives can open doors, etc.).

If you want a different example of that style of gameplay look at Ultima 6 or 7, which spent way more effort on environment than branching story paths but still enters the same style of gameplay.

There are a variety of MUDs that did something similar.